[PHOTO] Four photos of the Frank and Oak warehouse sale, 950 Dupont Street

Walking home last night after I picked up some groceries at my favourite corner store, I decided to stop to take a look at Frank and Oak's warehouse sale at 950 Dupont Street. This great warehouse was slated, as I noted back in November of 2015, to be a production facility for Bellwoods Brewery, but that hasn't materialized. For the time being, this warehouse seems to serve as a convenient enclosed space for whoever might like it for some weeks. Certainly it's a dramatic backdrop, with glass panes stretching above steel beams to the high roof and the glow of Dupont outside tinting the interior.

[PHOTO] Two photos from the Upper West Side, New York City

The Theodore Roosevelt Park that surrounds the American Museum of Natural History offers a grassy space with great uninterrupted sight lines.



Columbus Avenue, or Ninth, also offers passersby good views of distant things.

[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links: Dafonte Miller, Pacific Mall, Scarborough, real estate, TTC

• The whole sorry story of Dafonte Miller, who was brutally beaten by two off-duty policemen whose actions were not reported to SIU and may in fact have been covered up by (among others) their cop father, is appalling. Do not trust the police. The Toronto Star reports.


• The Pacific Mall has started to crack down, again, on counterfeit goods. The Toronto Star reports.


• Extending bike share programs to Scarborough sounds like a good idea in theory, but is there yet the density and infrastructure needed to support this? The Toronto Star reports.


• Trying to avoid Toronto becoming a preserve of the rich is a key goal. Will this result in the structural change to housing markets needed? The Toronto Star reports.


• Residents of a condo complex at Bayview and Eglinton are concerned about the effects of Eglinton Crosstown construction, making it difficult for them to feel safe going to and from their homes. CBC reports.


• Transit Toronto reports on the TTC's latest overcrowding measures.


• A Toronto real estate crunch could well drive talented people and professionals away from the city, one study reports. The Toronto Star notes.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Canada links: Ontario golf and sales tax, Goderich, Winnipeg, Vancouver

• TVO notes that municipally-operated gold courses are apparently commonplace in Ontario. Should cities divest of these, freeing up land and cost for other better uses?


• The idea of municipal sales taxes seems like something that should get implemented in Ontario cities, yet few seem willing to move on this. The Toronto Star examines the issue.


• CBC reports on how the small southern Ontario town of Goderich managed to accumulate 18 family doctors, thanks to a concerted and planned effort to recruit new physicians.


• Global News takes a look at some of the ghost signs of Winnipeg, legacies of an early commercial era.


• Terry Glavin at MacLean's suggests that the government of British Columbia might finally be taking steps to ensure affordable real estate options in Metro Vancouver.

[NEWS] Six links about Black Panther and Wakanda (#blackpanther, #wakanda)

• The Counterfactual History Review takes/u> a look at the plausibility of Wakanda, as a society, and finds it holds up. (There's something to be said about having the problems of one's own society being indigenous, not imposed by colonizers.)


• This article takes a look at the interest of Lesotho, a mountainous kingdom of southern Africa that was never quite fully colonized, on the idea of Wakanda.


• What is the relationship of Wakanda to Africa and the wider black diaspora? This article makes an argument. (Spoilers.)


• Queer representation in Wakanda is a real thing. All the more frustrating, then, if it is not quite realized.


• The Toronto Public Library's The Buzz points readers to more comics exploring Black Panther and Wakanda.


• Vulture takes a look at Christopher Priest, the writer who helped make Black Panther the character he is today more than a decade ago but then disappeared.

[NEWS] Five links on artificial intelligence (#artificialintelligence, #ai)

• Jessica Riskin at the Public Domain Review explores the automata, the pre-Babbage mechanical creations that were humanity's first effort at artificial intelligence.


• Katrina Onstad at Toronto Life profiles Gregory Hinton, the Toronto AI researcher who pushed the idea of neural networks--ancestor to modern-day deep learning--into the mainstream of AI research.


• Reverse-engineering the workings of the human brain would be a good way to learn how to build durable AIs. Wired makes the case.


• The Economist notes one central problem with modern AI is its inscrutability to outside scrutiny. How can the workings of an AI be shown, made visible?


• Gizmodo notes a report on AI warning that, without adequate regulation and preparation, artificial intelligence could have a destabilizing, even strongly negative, impact on the world of the imaginable future.